


If I'd Stayed, If You'd Tried, If We Could Only Turn Back Time

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 02:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5692069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Renee watches the coverage of the GCPD massacre, she wonders what she could have done differently to have prevented Barbara's part in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I'd Stayed, If You'd Tried, If We Could Only Turn Back Time

Even as she watched the news coverage, saw Barbara’s face staring at her from the screen, from the newspaper, Renee asked herself whether there could have been some mistake. That wasn’t Barbara, the woman she knew and loved, the woman she had once imagined sharing the rest of her life with. That was some stranger with her Barbara’s face, someone hiding behind a mask. Or there had to be some other explanation, some kind of crazy joke.

Renee had wondered whether there was anything she could have done to prevent this. If she’d stayed with her, maybe Barbara wouldn’t have had the chance to meet The Ogre, wouldn’t have become brainwashed by him. The irony was that she had felt that she was the problem in the relationship, thinking that with her history with the drink, she wasn’t the person Barbara had needed to support her with her own addiction, and had ended things with Barbara thinking that she was the one who was bad for her. But if Renee had stayed, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. She hadn’t ended it because she didn’t love Barbara; she had thought that her love for her was exactly why she SHOULD end it. But maybe she wasn’t as toxic for her after all; she certainly couldn’t have been as toxic as The Ogre. If Renee had just tried harder, tried to help Barbara work through her issues with self medicating instead of making assumptions and walking away, perhaps Commissioner Essen, the first commissioner who was actually going to do a good job in a very long time, and all the other officers, people she had known and worked alongside, would still be alive. As the news coverage flashed before her eyes, all those familiar faces staring out at her from the TV screen, Renee wondered if their blood was on her hands as much as it was on Barbara’s.

Was there anything she should have seen? Renee had known that Barbara was distant from her parents, but had never known why – she’d picked up on the fact that Barbara never talked about them but the one time she’d tried to bring the subject up, Barbara had shut it down and Renee had never asked again. If she had persevered, maybe she would have come to understand more about Barbara’s relationship with her parents and how it had come to end the way it did. Beyond that, there aren’t any signs that Renee can think of. But maybe if she had been sober when they started things, Renee would have seen more, would maybe have been in a better position to prevent it.

Another part of Renee felt that she couldn’t take all the blame. Look at Gordon, hero of the hour, the guy who kept appearing on TV, the one who everyone thought was so great for always saving the city. Renee had even started wondering if she’d been unfair on the guy because of her own feelings towards Barbara. But not now. Not as she watched him sticking his tongue down the new medical examiner’s throat so soon after breaking up with Barbara, and as far as Renee was aware not even having fought to get her back. And Renee had even considered calling the guy for Barbara, thinking he was the one to help get her back on the right path. Obviously not. Besides, since he’d spent more time with Barbara than Renee had recently, surely he would also have been in a position to have spotted any signs that existed. No, Gordon had to accept some responsibility for the way things had turned out.

Allen had tried to tell her that she couldn’t blame herself so much, that there was no way she could have known that Barbara would have fallen into the hands of the Ogre. But Renee knew she could never dismiss it as easily as that, knew she would always wonder whether there was anything she could have done. It may have been that Jerome Valeska would have still carried out the massacre, without Barbara’s help. But Renee knew she would ask herself every day whether she could have saved some part of the Barbara she knew and loved, and a part of her still continued to love even now.


End file.
